Breaking New Ground

What if the biggest obstacle to solving our problems is nothing more than a failure to believe that we can?

Rick Caruso has spent his life stepping optimistically into places where other people see no way forward by asking a deceptively simple question: What can we do to make this better? From his appointment as Commissioner to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and later the City's troubled Police Department, to the creation of his bold and innovative real estate ventures including L.A.'s world-renowned retail center The Grove, Caruso built a reputation for finding steadfast solutions even in the face of staunch adversity. By employing the great teachers of experience and curiosity, he continues to do what he can to improve Los Angeles, the city he loves, and in Breaking New Ground, he shares lessons learned along the way—while offering us all a path forward to a better future.

Again and again, Caruso discovered that breakthroughs rarely come from knowing everything at the outset. They come from asking better questions, bringing the right people into the room, listening without ego, separating ideology from reality, and refusing to give up until workable solutions emerge. Ultimately, they require a steadfast dedication to the belief that there is always a solution and that defeat is not an option.

Breaking New Ground is the story of how his philosophy was forged—from the examples of immigrant grandparents and a father who lost one fortune and built another, to Caruso's own successes, failures, public battles, family life, faith, and unexpected turns through business and government.

Caruso is less interested in prescribing a formula for becoming successful than in exploring how successful problem-solvers think: how they distinguish what matters from what merely makes noise; how they balance conviction with compromise; how they recognize when conventional wisdom has stopped working; and how they remain fearless enough to see difficult decisions through.

Part memoir, part argument, and part blueprint for action, Breaking New Ground offers a timely proposition for anyone confronting a problem that feels too complicated, entrenched, or divisive to solve.

There is always another way forward. Sometimes you simply have to be willing to build it.